


Scheduling Sex

by Castillon02



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Retired Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 09:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castillon02/pseuds/Castillon02
Summary: Bond endures a week of work-based cockblocking before taking steps to ensure that he and Q can spend enough time together.





	Scheduling Sex

**Author's Note:**

  * For [midrashic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/gifts).



> For the amazing midrashic, who has made my entire month with her feedback. <3 And thank you so much to opalescentgold for the beta!

“So,” Bond said in the doorway, and it was all he needed to say, really, when combined with the suggestive head tilt, the cocked hips, and the warmth of his gaze meeting Q’s. 

Also, Bond was just back from his evening exercise with Troll, their shaggy mutt of indistinguishable breeding but commendable energy levels, and a happy, endorphins-high Bond was often perfectly pleased to finish out the night with a round before bed. 

Q was often perfectly pleased to do the same. This time, however… “No,” he said bluntly. 

“No?” Bond asked, seductive, because sometimes when Q said ‘No,’ he really meant ‘I’m grumpy, and if you could put me in a better mood so we can have coitus, that would be lovely, ta.’

This was not one of those occasions. “Really no,” Q confirmed. “I have a meeting at five in the morning and I want at least six hours of sleep for it.” He already had his _History of Shellfish_ book in his lap; it never failed to put him out like a cosh to the head.

Bond sighed. “Those are the perils of having a high-powered executive for a husband, I suppose.” He threw his workout clothes in the hamper and joined Q in bed, naked and amiable as usual, before pulling out his own book to read from his bedside drawer. “Still want me to drive you in?” Most mornings, they commuted together. 

“No, I’ve scheduled a lift from a company car,” Q said. “You’ve got that field exercise with the recruits later this week, don’t you? Better get your rest while you can.”

“Are you saying that you think one of them might be actual competition?” Bond asked, arching his eyebrows. 

Q shrugged innocently. “I don’t know… You’ve said great things about Kitterjee’s progress.” He favored Bond with a shit-eating grin. 

Bond growled. “They’re all going down and you know it,” he said and proceeded to bury his nose in his latest thriller. 

Q flipped to the chapter about barnacles and his eyes immediately started to droop. Unlike Bond, who finished his before-bed books, he had never got past the first half of _A History of Shellfish_ ; for all he knew, the later species had evolved wings.

***

The next evening, Bond tried to tempt him from his office to the supply closet. As one of the senior agents’ trainers, Bond kept fairly regular hours; he’d just got off shift. 

Q, on the other hand... “Ah, I can’t,” he said, softening his firm tone of voice with an apologetic frown. “I’ve got Imelda in five minutes, and if I don’t get to her, then I’ll miss R&D.” 

“And I know how much R&D means to you, and I would never dare to keep the two of you apart,” Bond finished with a wry smile. He pulled Q into a ‘hello and goodbye’ kiss, running a gentling hand down Q’s spine.

Q closed his eyes as the tension of the day slid out of his shoulders. He leaned his forehead against Bond’s. “Love you,” he said, feeling stupidly soppy saying it, even if it wasn’t the first time. But he did love Bond, and Bond should be reminded. 

“I know,” Bond replied, smirking.

A _Star Wars_ reference; Q was ridiculously proud.

***

Bond didn’t even ask on Wednesday. He brought Q some Thai summer rolls for lunch, played footsie with him behind Q’s desk as they ate, and then left so Q could prepare for the new 007′s mission in France, which was already looking like almost as much of a shitshow as the new 007’s magician-stache. 

“Shave it,” Q told him that afternoon. “Spies who go undercover aren’t allowed to have memorable facial hair.” 

“But it’s part of my look!” The new 007 attempted a charming grin. He had a useful skillset and the right amount of ego for the job; unfortunately, he’d also had an unorthodox recruitment and he still hadn’t figured out which rules he should and shouldn’t break. 

“If you don’t shave it now, you’re going to have a different kind of close shave later,” Q said. “Perhaps a fatal one. Now, you can get rid of it yourself or I can book you a visit to the cosmetics department for a nice hot wax treatment, and believe me when I say that they’re _very_ thorough.” He looked the new 007 up and down, hoping the man felt it in every hair follicle. “Now, what’s it going to be?” 

“I hate you,” the new 007 informed him, and left in a huff. However, he was clean-shaven when he met his contact on the Eurostar that evening. By half-two that morning, he had spent several hours successfully posing as a private investor at a dinner party hosted by the target and his wife—or, perhaps, the target and her husband. They were both involved in a massive weapons-dealing operation, but part of 007’s brief was to find out who the mastermind was. 

“It’s got to be the man,” 007 said in his hotel later, stripping off his tuxedo. “The woman hardly spoke. I did manage to get a notebook out of her purse—though don’t ask how.” His smarmy voice implied that a lot had happened while he’d had his comms turned off. 

Q rolled his eyes. 

“Anyway,” 007 continued, “lots of blackmail material in there. Perhaps he’s got something on her as well and makes her do his secretary work.”

“Hmm,” Q said, unconvinced. So far so good, at least. 

For now. 

Barring the possibility of an assassination attempt, nothing important was predicted to happen until the couple tugged on a few of the leads 007 had dropped. Q handed the comms off to Nguyen, who was on night duty. She would hand them over to Ogunleye when the morning shift came in. For his part, Q planned to have a nice lie-in with Bond the next day; if their targets were going to get to sleep in after their long night, then Q bloody well would too. 

The house was dark when he walked in, and he shushed Troll and the cats when they came to greet him, their tails waving in the air. Sometimes he woke Bond up when he came in like this; other times Bond’s subconscious realized that it was only Q and kept him blissfully asleep. Q stripped off in the hallway, stumbled through their dark bedroom, and slid into bed without so much as putting on his pajamas.

Next to him, Bond blinked his eyes open and mumbled, “Hullo, Qyuuoooaaarrrgh,” his mouth stretching open in a jaw-cracking yawn around the vowel sound.

“Hello, yourself,” Q murmured, and kissed the closest spot on Bond’s neck before shifting into his usual funeral sleeping pose, his hands over his belly. This was the position that best kept _A History of Shellfish_ from thumping onto the floor and jolting him awake. As a bonus, the lack of sleep-cuddling also kept Bond from worrying that he’d accidentally sleep-strangle Q in the middle of the night.

Perhaps it was a little odd not to entangle themselves while they slept like some other couples did, but it worked for them, and that was what mattered. And after all, they did enough tangling while awake to make up for any deficit while they were asleep, right? 

Or rather, they usually did. When Q’s schedule wasn’t being an arse. At least they’d have tomorrow morning… 

***

Unfortunately, when Q woke, well-rested and ready to give his husband a blowie, Bond was gone. He had left a note on the bedside table:

_Have the recruits all day for a field exercise. Check the CCTV near me if you want to see some fun._

Q alerted his branch to the exercise and they soon had various bets going. He lost ten quid when his pick for first trainee out, a normally impulsive agent, fell asleep behind a hedge and took a three-hour nap. Some surreptitious hacking revealed that she’d spent most of the night playing an MMORPG instead of sleeping. 

On the other hand, Q won 150 pounds on Bond, who was still in the running by seven that evening with only three of his trainees left in the game. Q collected his winnings and more than a couple of knowing eyebrow waggles from various Branch personnel when he said that he’d be going home, thank you, as he suddenly had a few important _things_ to do. 

Bond walked through their bedroom door a little after ten, and he looked incredibly, deservedly smug. Perhaps his blue suit was a bit mussed, but the count was undeniable: fifteen junior agents down, zero to go. 

The old dog still had it. 

“Why, hello, Mr. Bond,” Q said, draped seductively over the bed and wearing those little silk briefs that Bond liked, with the thigh garters for good measure. Bond liked the look of the things, and he liked using them to tug Q’s legs where he wanted them to go.

“And hello to you too, Mr. Bond,” Bond said in the doorway. Despite the affectionate words, the firm set of his shoulders and the cool analysis in his gaze gave away the bit of predator still lingering near the surface.

Q shivered, delighted. This was going to be good.

Bond unbuttoned his jacket and let it fall to the floor. He set his gun on top of the table by the door but kept the holster on. He prowled towards the bed.

Q’s toes curled with anticipation. 

And then Q’s phone rang. 

Even worse, it was the ‘really, definitely an emergency, not just Timothy forgetting how to code again’ ringtone.

“Shit!” Q scrambled to the charger to pick the phone up.

“Fuck!” Bond crossed the room to reholster his gun and left. The rush of kibble in the kitchen showed he was refilling the pet bowls, just in case. 

Meanwhile, Q answered the call. “I’ll be in in twenty, online in five,” he said. Nguyen briefed him while he threw on some trousers and a shirt. He picked up Bond’s discarded jacket while he was at it. 

Outside, the car rumbled into readiness. Q thanked Nguyen, grabbed his bag and a banana from the counter, and hurried out. He slung Bond’s jacket over the back of his headrest while Bond pulled out into the street, and then he flipped open his laptop so he could assess the situation while Bond drove. “007,” he explained. 

“Of course it is,” Bond said. “M is probably laughing in her grave.”

***

Q spent the better part of the night helping to extricate 007 from a subterranean carnival of horrors that his target had lured him into. On the positive end of things, Ms. Dire monologued quite revealingly before dropping 007 into her oubliette. On the negative side, the trap door to freedom was on the ceiling, only reachable by Ferris wheel and only able to be unlocked by using keys obtained from the other literal death trap rides. The presence of the rotting corpses of past failures lent a certain _je ne sais quois_ to the whole affair. 

Bond sat on the sidelines for a while and gave occasional advice through Q— when he wasn’t chuckling darkly at the fate of his errant cockblocker, anyway. 

“What did you do to deserve this?” Q asked 007 as he made his way to the nearest safe house. The carnival spoke of a significant amount of displeasure. 

“You know how I stole her blackmail book out of her purse?” 007 said. “I also drank her under the table and put her to bed like a baby. We didn’t actually, _you know_ … Which I thought was a good thing! But I suppose she didn’t like being treated like she was young and naive, and maybe she wanted us to have sex so she could feel like I was under her influence.”

Bond put his head in his hands. This was a mistake he never would have made, not because he wouldn’t have hesitated to have sex with her, but because he intuited how people wanted to be treated and adjusted his actions accordingly. He would have approached Ms. Dire as a challenger for her to subdue and he would have avoided condescending older brother behavior at all costs. 

“To be fair,” 007 said, “that was when we still thought she was the bad guy’s younger wife instead of the bad guy.” 

Q said, “You mean, of course, when we still thought she was only the co-leader of her husband’s French arms dealing operation instead of a puppet master with husbands and weapons depots in five different countries?” 

Ms. Dire had been well-pleased to boast about her financial and marital successes. 

007′s silence on the other end of the line was sheepish. 

“Get after her,” Q said, having already received the orders from M. “Facial recognition would catch her at the airports, so she’s got to be on slower transit. I’ll update you with any leads we get, but in the meantime, you’re on your own.”

“Understood,” 007 said. He signed off.

Bond sighed and stood. “Got to get the obstacle course ready for the trainees,” he said. “I should make them practice doing witty remarks while they’re in a stressful situation.” From the grimace on his face, he was only half-joking. Ms. Dire’s monologue had been particularly cutting, and the new 007’s banter had been depressingly substandard. 

Q would be damned if he let the new 007 ruin the old 007’s morning. He stood up next to Bond and stretched his arms to the ceiling until he heard a couple of promising pops from his back. As his arms came down, he let them settle on Bond’s shoulders and he pulled Bond into a kiss, Q Branch audience be damned.

At the expected wolf whistle, Bond feigned a swoon and forced Q dip him. “Oh, darling,” he said and fluttered his eyelashes so that the whole room laughed. But he bussed Q’s cheek as he came out of the dip, and instead of trudging away, he walked out of the Branch with a bit of pep in his step. 

***

It took 36 tense hours for 007 to resolve the French situation. No more explosions were involved, but 007 nearly got himself dropped in a barrel of fluoroantimonic acid before managing a rather acrobatic escape thanks to his training as a stage magician.

And thanks to his training as a 00, he was (finally) able to incapacitate his target and upload a program onto Ms. Dire’s devices that would enable MI6 personnel who were not Q to digitally impersonate her and sweep up the majority of her network.

“Your transport home is at the docks, the _Empress Gold_ ,” Q told him before transferring the comms to Nguyen. It was an ironic name for a grimy junker that was scheduled to reach Dover in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, perhaps a nice sedate cargo trip to various ports in France would give 007 time to contemplate the error of his ways. 

Q’s own return trip was much shorter. He even caught Bond leaving the house on the way to work, and he took a long, luxurious minute just to hold him, breathe in the scent of his aftershave, and let himself realize that he was done for now; he could rest. 

“All right?” Bond asked, his arms firm around Q’s shoulders. 

“Perfectly,” Q said. 

Bond nodded because he knew that when Q said ‘perfectly,’ he meant that he was drained but physically unharmed, and would only require some rest and time to himself in order to re-energize. If Q had said something like, ‘Perhaps a little left of center,’ then Bond would have inquired further, and might have spent the day with him to help him decompress. 

But no one had died and things hadn’t gone bad politically, so instead Q said, “Have fun at work.” 

Bond grinned a little evilly. “Oh, I will. Today they’re learning to run through drywall.” 

Was that on the official Six curriculum? Better not to ask. It’d be useful, in any event. 

After kissing Bond goodbye, Q spent a long time playing with Troll, Argyle, and Harlequin in the living room, feeding them bits of his sandwich and teasing them with their favorite feather wand. 

Soft fur under his fingers; cat and dog smell in his nose; slices of Bond’s leftover pork loin and homemade bread in his belly; plush carpet under his toes—toes which he didn’t dare wriggle, because otherwise Argyle would pounce on them. 

He really was all right. He was home. 

*** 

Q slept until evening and woke up sniffing the air. When he wandered into the kitchen, he found Bond whisking a pot of gravy, his “I cook as good as I look” apron tied into a neat bow behind his back and a kitchen towel flipped over one shoulder. He was freshly showered, his feet bare and his short hair still damp. Beneath the apron, a pair of blue boxer-briefs clung attractively to his arse, and a faded Royal Navy t-shirt stretched tight around his shoulders and biceps. 

The sight of him stopped Q in the kitchen doorway; for a moment, all he could do was look and admire.

Then Bond turned and winked at him like the irresistible arse he was. 

Q was across the kitchen in an instant, curling his fingers around Bond’s neck and pulling him into a lingering snog. “Hello,” he said when they parted, peering over Bond’s shoulder at the pots and pans on the stove. 

Bond’s eyes crinkled in a silent laugh. “Hello, yourself,” he said, as usual, and proceeded to dish out a heavy dinner of roast beef, potatoes, carrots, and gravy. To top it all off, he pulled a warm rum-caramel pudding out of the oven. It was far too delicious for Q not to eat at least half of it, even though he suspected Bond of ulterior motives. 

(Bond had a hard time sleeping when Q was puttering about the house in the middle of the night, but at least he’d given up on plying Q with literal sedatives. Q hated the stupid-drowsy feeling that came from taking Benadryl, but a food coma was playing pretty fair, considering no one was forcing Q to stuff himself silly.) 

“I know what you’re up to,” Q said, leaning into Bond as Bond steered him down the hallway and into the bedroom. 

“I know that you know that I know that you know that I know,” Bond replied. While Q worked that out in his head, Bond took advantage and tipped him over onto the mattress. “Here,” he said, and handed Q his _History of Shellfish_. 

“Wait,” Q said, “I need to check my schedule—see when I have to go in…” 

“Already taken care of,” Bond said. He flipped Q’s laptop open to his work calendar and held it up for Q to see. The next two days were labelled ‘Bond Time,’ and so were a handful of other days throughout the month. “Your job tomorrow is me,” Bond said smugly. He put the laptop back down on the side table and picked up his tablet to show Q his own work schedule for the next two days. It read ‘Q Time.’ “And my job tomorrow is you.” He set his tablet back on the side table. 

“Manipulative sod,” Q mumbled. 

“You like it,” Bond said, low and certain in Q’s ear. 

Q shivered. Bond was right, of course. Q quite liked not having to do all of the problem-solving in his own home.

Bond pressed a whiskery kiss against Q’s forehead, a silent promise. “Go to sleep,” he said. “We’ll both be here in the morning.” 

Q couldn’t help the upward curve of his lips. They would, wouldn’t they? After all, it was on the schedule now. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3 Constructive criticism is welcome.


End file.
